Comparing Water Vapor Trends Derived From Infrared and Microwave Radiometry

The Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder. (ATMS) are the primary instruments on NPOESS and NPP for measuring profiles of atmospheric temperature and humidity but have the observations have different error characteristics. CrIS is an infrared radiometer using 6 micron thermal radiances to infer humidity while ATMS uses 183 GHz radiances. CrIS has good vertical resolution and but lose sensitivity with cloudiness while ATMS has poorer vertical resolution but is insensitive to nonprecipitating clouds. The error characteristics of humidity are complicated by the interaction of the errors from the two instruments propagating through a highly nonlinear combined CrIS and ATMS retrieval and are highly state dependent because cloudiness is correlated with relative humidity by dynamical processes involving uplift such as cumulus convection and baroclinic instability. We assess how these error sources impact climate trend analysis using data from the sounders on NASA's Aqua satellite. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Advanced Microwave Sounder-A (AMSU-A) and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) fly on the Aqua satellite and have similar capabilities to CrIS and ATMS. We have produced humidity profiles from the AIRS/AMSU/HSB radiances using the AIRS unified retrieval system in four modes of different combinations of instruments: 1) all three instruments, 2) AIRS and AMSU, 3) AMSU and HSB and 4) AIRS alone. These correspond to the 1) CrIS and ATMS operating together using cloud clearing, 2) CrIS and ATMS operating in together but without the microwave humidity profiling channels, 3) ATMS alone and 4) CrIS alone using hole hunting. Trend analysis of zonal means from the four datasets is compared and mapped products are used to illustrate how measurement capabilities affect the derived trends.